


If You Love Him

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: iCarly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam doesn’t love like Carly does. She doesn’t doodle the word on notebooks and desktops, doesn’t spout it out whenever she feels even the mildest of interests in someone. It’s not something she’s said more than once, just that once in the elevator door, and some frail and dying part of her knows she probably never will again, not like that, not with any meaning. When Sam loves somebody, really and truly loves them, that’s it. She loved Freddie until she was sick with the feeling, loves him still. Post iGoodbye</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Love Him

**Author's Note:**

> Old work I posted on my writing blog but for some reason never posted here.

**A/N: If you were hoping I'd come along and magically fix everything after iGoodbye I'm sorry to disappoint. Come back when I'm done being pissed off. ~~Which will probably be never~~**

Carly tells her before she gets in the cab. It’s a quick little confession, a blurb, a blurt, a blip in time, and yet it makes her heart stop all the same. It just stops. There’s no stutter, no skip to it, and Sam finds herself standing on the cold November sidewalk with her own stilled and frozen heart in her hands. She should have known better, after all, than to wear it on her sleeve. 

“I kissed Freddie,” Carly says, half a smile and half a giggle as if it’s no big deal. And it isn’t, shouldn’t be at least, wouldn’t if they had been having this conversation two years before. In fact, they had. At least then Carly’s confession had been panicked, something Sam hadn’t felt the need to worry about because it didn’t mean anything. This time, however, it’s pleased. “He was right,” Carly goes on, unaware of the way each word digs into Sam’s cold and cracking heart. “I just needed some time to let the hero worship wear off so I could sort out my feelings myself.” She pauses, cab door still ajar where she’s leaning against it. “That’s . . . That is okay with you, right?”

Sam wants to tell her no, that of course it’s not okay. She can’t quite find the words to, though, can’t form them on her tongue let alone spit them out in the face of this goodbye. Carly wouldn’t understand, anyways. Sam knows all too well that Carly still flings the word _Love_ around in the same frivolous manner she always has. It’s a word of passing affection covered in glitter and little pink hearts that can be gifted upon whomever she pleases. It’s as meaningless as she makes it sound, a word tossed to the wind without care. And that’s exactly why Sam can’t tell her no, can’t explain it to her in a way she can comprehend. 

It’s not okay because she loved him, loves him still.

It’s not okay because it’s not fair.

It’s not okay because Carly is leaving her alone here, in this world, this city she’s never seen eye to eye with, and taking Freddie’s heart with her.

It’s not okay because Carly always gets what she wants, and Sam has always willingly given it. She will, of course, continue to do so. Carly’s happiness is her happiness, and if that expression was any less true they wouldn’t be standing here, on either side of an open taxi door, with the seconds of their goodbye ticking away in silence.

So she says it. How can she not? “That’s fine,” she smiles, holding every tremor and tremble inside her. “That’s great. I’m sure the nub is ecstatic, his lifelong dream has come true.”

Carly grins in return, pleased with both Sam’s reply and herself. “Thanks. I was scared you were going to be upset.”

 _No, you weren’t_ , Sam thinks bitterly. _If you were you wouldn’t have done it_. But it’s not her place to say that, to dictate Carly’s feelings and label them in such a shallow way. “Nah,” she scoffs, “I’m happy for you guys. Really.”

And that part, at least, is true. She is happy for them. Stupidly so even, because by all rights she shouldn’t be. She’s known it for years now, known how this entire mixed up tale of the three of them would end, and she had been resigned to it for just as long. It had been that little flutter and flicker of hope that had thrown her off, a spoken _“Hey, I love you,”_ that she’d foolishly latched on to. Now, she mentally berates herself for it, crushes the words against her already shattered heart and thinks, _Stupid_. _God, why are you always so stupid_.

There’s not much else to say, then, and the cab door closes and leaves Sam standing alone on the sidewalk as it pulls away, waving at nothing but empty midnight air.

It only takes her a minute to locate her motorcycle parked along the back side of Bushwell Plaza, another minute to fumble for her keys and kick it into gear. She doesn’t think about anything then, her eyes on the road ahead and her hands fisted tight around the ignition. Seattle Novembers are chilly, frost-bitten and slick with fog and rain, but Sam doesn’t pay this fact any heed. She barely feels it. Instead, she concentrates on the engine’s rumbling hum beneath her and the wind whipping her hair out behind her. 

When she stops, stalled under a stoplight without another car in sight, she takes a second to look at herself. Her clothes, stripes and jewelry and thin, tight fabric, are all things she used to hate. Her hands, though still a little grease stained from piecing the bike together, don’t bear a single callous, let alone a bruise or mark. She hasn’t punched anyone in weeks, hasn’t cut herself while assembling odd weapons or playing with explosives. The nail backscratcher had been the tamest thing she’d constructed since she could walk. She rubs a cold hand across her cheek and pulls it away to study the smudge of makeup powder that comes away on her skin. All of it, every last inch of her as she is now, was crafted over time and under false illusions of _“Maybe when you’re a little more normal.”_

Sam has to pull over then, engine whining in protest as she fights to remember how to breathe. She’d tried, hadn’t she? She’d been trying even before he’d said that, been trying ever since she’d convinced herself Pete wouldn’t see anything in her otherwise. She’d tried so hard, had been so careful in molding herself into the restrained little box called _normal_.

The light’s been green for awhile now, but Sam doesn’t move. There’s no one else around, she has no need to. So it’s easy, by the bright streetlight on a dark road, to let everything fall apart.

_“It was intense.”_

_“Just intense?”_

_“And fun.”_

She’d been a fool. He’d said it, hadn’t he, back then. He’d said it to her face. It was fun, a fling, a cute little side story from the main plot of his life, nothing more. And whatever words had followed that statement had just been for show. 

The worst part, still, is that she’s not mad at him. She should be, and she wishes dearly that she could be, it would be easier that way. But she can’t, not if it’s Carly he’s chosen instead of her. Because being mad at him would be equal to being mad at Carly, and she isn’t. She’s mad at herself.

Mad for hoping.

Mad for thinking she had a chance.

Mad for loving him so much that it hurt, so much that it rips her apart where she sits on her motorcycle and chokes on her own sobs.

_“I guess we’re both insane.”_

No. No, just her. Sam buries her face in her hands, muffles her hiccuping tears in her shaking fingers. She knows the line, of course, that should follow all this, a last quote of irony that digs itself into her too-damaged heart. 

 _If you love him, let him go_.

She will, there’s no question of that. Sam will hold her head high when she sees Freddie next and tell him she doesn’t care. That doesn’t mean it will hurt any less.

Sam doesn’t love like Carly does. She doesn’t doodle the word on notebooks and desktops, doesn’t spout it out whenever she feels even the mildest of interests in someone. It’s not something she’s said more than once, just that once in the elevator door, and some frail and dying part of her knows she probably never will again, not like that, not with any meaning. When Sam loves somebody, really and truly loves them, that’s it. She loved Freddie until she was sick with the feeling, loves him still. And god forbid she’d held he smallest of hopes that he might feel the same.

How stupid of her. How stupid of her for hoping that, for thinking that love was something she could earn when she’d never had it to begin with, something she could win while standing beside Carly, who was so loved and would always be so loved.

Sam breaks, her whole frame trembling with anguish where she sits on her bike on the side of the road, cursing her own foolish, crushed heart.

It was always going to end this way, and she’d known that from the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll post some fic rants about Tuna Jump later, but for now I just thought I'd repost this thing.


End file.
